The Essential Guide to Musicpreneurship: 2017 Edition

Increasingly, the term musicpreneur is starting to come into more common use.

The purpose of this guide is to examine musicpreneurship in detail, to consider what the advantages and implications are, how it could open up new opportunities for artists, businesspeople, and more.

The guide was written by me – David Andrew Wiebe. I have 15 years of experience in the music industry, and 5 years of experience in business (as of 2017). This guide was written from my perspective, and I have brought all of my experience, knowledge and business training to the table.

Are you ready? Let’s begin by taking a look at what a musicpreneur is.

What Is A Musicpreneur?

Plainly, the term musicpreneur is a combination of the words music and entrepreneur.

Though it certainly refers to a particular type of person, the definition is broad enough that it could apply to several different types of individuals.

In general, a musicpreneur could refer to one of three different types of people defined below:

Someone that sees an opportunity in the music business and starts their own company within the industry.

A musician or artist that is business-minded, and uses their business skills to further their careers.

A combination of the above.

Here’s a little caveat: I have always felt that anybody in the second category could have a business outside of the the music industry, but which enables them to earn an income and pursue their passion in music.

For example, I’ve heard a story about a man that owns a Harley-Davidson dealership. Though the dealership doesn’t really earn him any money, he is able to pursue his passion of motorcycles because he has a corrugated cardboard business that is profitable. He’s able to support his passion business through a separate enterprise.

This definition of a musicpreneur allows for an individual to have assets and business income outside of their musical pursuits to fuel their music career.

Can Anyone Be A Musicpreneur?

The short answer is “yes”, but for reasons we’ll explore a little later, the implications are such that you would either have to be business-minded already or have the dogged determination to seek mentorship, to study, learn, grow, and change to become more business oriented.

You would have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone, try new things, experiment, exercise persistence and have the tenacity to go after and achieve your goals. There’s a component of business education as well as personal development – especially if you’re starting from scratch.

A musicpreneur is someone who has chosen themselves. They’ve come to the important realization that they need to motivate and inspire themselves. They know that they can’t wait around “for the phone to ring”, and are willing to put themselves out there and risk rejection.

You don’t have to be particularly smart or talented to succeed in either realm (I’ve interviewed enough successful business owners to know), but you do have to understand your strengths and weaknesses so that you can look for solutions and build teams around you. That team should be made up of people that are more talented, more skilled, and more knowledgeable than you are.

What Are The Benefits Of Being/Becoming A Musicpreneur?

The main difference between a musicpreneur and a non-musicpreneur primarily comes down to mindset. In other words, how you think.

So the main advantage of becoming a musicpreneur is that you position yourself to find opportunity where others might wait around and miss it. You don’t count on someone else to make things happen on your behalf.

There’s something powerful about taking full responsibility for your life, your career, and everything that has ever happened to you. Musicpreneurship is about ownership. It’s about taking control and being accountable to yourself and to others.

A musicpreneur isn’t necessarily better than a traditional musician or someone that’s employed within the music industry. Ultimately, there are different paths for different people.

There are advantages to simply being a musician or an employee. You don’t have to concern yourself with accounting, administration, marketing, advertising, fund allocation, customer service, and everything that goes along with the not-so-glamorous side of business.

It should be noted, however, that a musician will find themselves managing many of the previously mentioned aspects of their career as they continue to grow it (especially if they choose not to work with a team), and employees are pretty much always working on some aspect of a business, though their responsibilities may not extend into every facet of the enterprise or the operations.

Of course, like I mentioned earlier, a musicpreneur also takes the time to understand and analyze their strengths and weaknesses. They know that they can’t do it all alone, and they go out of their way to make sure they don’t have a finger in every pie (though they can be a little reluctant to delegate at first).

In short, the benefits of musicpreneurship largely depend on you. Putting yourself out there and expanding your comfort zone isn’t easy. Sharing your vision, getting a following and rallying support isn’t easy. Working with a team isn’t always easy. Creating a profitable, successful business isn’t easy.

The rewards, however, are definitely worth the effort. You will live a more purposeful, more meaningful life as a result of pursuing a worthwhile vision. You will have the opportunity to change people’s lives and add a great deal of value to those around you. Success is not assured, but there’s no question you will learn valuable lessons along the way.

Ultimately, it’s a difference in lifestyle. You will live differently than others if you choose to be an entrepreneur. Instead of looking to some external source to validate your ideas and cause you to be a success, you’ll do what it takes to see your vision become a reality.

The Mindset Of An Entrepreneur

There’s a cliché that often gets repeated in entrepreneurial circles; if everyone is headed in the same direction, turn and run the other way!

This is because following what everyone else is doing isn’t going to produce different results. If you want to achieve more than what others are achieving, then you’ll have to take a fundamentally different approach to life.

To be perfectly honest, it’s impossible to encapsulate how successful businesspeople think in just a few sentences. However, there probably isn’t a single one that couldn’t tell you what they believe and stand for!

Accomplished businesspeople tend to be strong-minded, grounded, committed, and hard-working. Outside observers may even perceive them as being obsessed, arrogant or cut-throat, and some certainly are.

Most employees are working for money and other people. Entrepreneurs flip this on its head – they have money and other people work for them!

Here are some key things I’ve observed about successful people. Again, this isn’t to say that all entrepreneurs possess these qualities or that they share in the same philosophy, but you will find that many of these attributes ring true for individuals on a path of achievement.

They are lifelong learners.

I had the chance to chat with AA Accountants’ Managing Director Shahzad Nawaz in 2015. I am fortunate enough to be able to talk to successful business owners on a regular basis due to the nature of my work. Shaz mentioned that he was in the habit of reading a book per week, and when I asked him about marketing (because I recognized his proficiency and was trying to learn myself), he pointed me to several resources that I have since learned a great deal from (mostly Dan Kennedy books).

I have adopted the same habit of reading one book per week for myself, and I have found it to be a far more effective way of consuming and absorbing information than merely reading 15 minutes per day. However, I can’t recommend adopting that habit unless you have a lot of free time, or you choose to learn how to speed read.

I would suggest checking out Jim Kwik’s free video on speed reading to get started. Additionally, I know a lot of entrepreneurs that say they listen to books, but that’s not the same thing. Ideally, you should do both. listen to value-adding audio programs, and read books.

They stress attitude over knowledge.

In other words, you don’t need to know everything! Too much knowledge can actually paralyze you from taking action. Many people plan to act, and never get around to the acting part.

As an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to make mistakes and learn from them. If you are perpetually stuck in analysis and planning, you will never get around to doing anything.

When you have the right mindset, you can fail forward, learn from what went wrong, and do better next time. Failure is never final unless it’s the last attempt you make.

They think outside-the-box.

When I think of outside-the-box thinkers that fit the mold of musicpreneur, I can’t help but think of Derek Sivers.

These days, he’s more of a writer, and doesn’t necessarily have a direct connection with the music industry, but he used to be a musician himself, and is the former founder of CD Baby, which he sold for $22 million.

I feel much more in tune with how Derek thinks these days, but when I first started delving into his blog posts, emails, videos and other material, my thinking would be stretched every single time. If there’s anyone that observed the trend and ran the other way, it would be Derek. For more, make sure to check out my interview with Derek.

They seek to add value to the world.

If a business doesn’t solve a problem, then the chances of it growing and thriving are pretty slim. By building a business, you can create more jobs, give back to the world, and offer products and services that legitimately help people.

I have heard it said that if you make it your mission to serve people, money will chase you down! I highly doubt that every entrepreneur thinks this way, but many businesspeople I know would resonate with this principle.

They are goal oriented.

Entrepreneurs understand the power and value of setting goals and creating a plan for achieving them. You may not hit your goals every time, but if you write down a goal, set a trajectory for its attainment, and daily follow your plan, you’ll almost certainly come closer to hitting it than if you had never set a goal at all!

They are growth oriented.

What is the greatest value of pursuing your dreams? It often comes down to personal growth.

Even if you never make boatloads of money or hit all of your goals, the person that you become through the process of building a business is paramount to anything else you could accomplish.

Entrepreneurs often don’t hit a homerun with their first, second or even third businesses. But they know that if they keep getting back up and applying what they learn, they’ll be able to build a better enterprise the next time around.

You will become a more resilient and resourceful person as you continually work towards your objectives.

Implications & Possibilities

In the article The 4 Pillars of Success in Music, I outlined the qualities I believe musicians need to acquire to be truly successful in the music industry. As an aside, it might shed some light on why it’s so difficult to breakthrough as an artist too.

Note: Cultivating these qualities individually can be incredibly difficult. A better approach would be to work with people that have complementary skills, people that are strong where you are weak.

1. Talent & Creative Ability

The first pillar is talent & creative ability. I point out the fact that you don’t necessarily need to be the most talented to succeed. The majority of top 40 hits (especially in the last 10 years) are relatively simple in terms of lyrical content, production, instrumentation, and so on.

However, you still need to be creative enough to be able to write songs, and you still need enough talent to sound good on a recording. You can have someone else write the music and the lyrics, but it’s hard to negotiate being a thoroughly unskilled singer or instrumentalist and still connect with a larger market.

2. Marketing Capacity

The second pillar is marketing capacity. This refers to one’s ability to market and promote themselves and/or their music.

Most musicians will at least be introduced to the concept of marketing, especially if they ever get around to recording an album and putting it out into the world (when they realize how difficult it is to get people to buy it). Musicians that hang around online often stumble across websites and experts that teach them the inner workings of the industry as well.

Some musicians are really great at marketing. They know how to connect with people, expose their music to a larger audience, and drive more sales for their music. Many others have no idea where to start, and that’s one of the reasons why they are unsuccessful in getting people to listen to their music.

The value of marketing, however, will probably never go away. The need to stand out in an increasingly noisy world is only going to grow, so knowing how to market your music and coming up with creative solutions is absolutely essential.

3. People Skills

The third pillar is people skills, and this is where I would imagine there is considerable drop-off in knowledge and experience for most artists.

I’m not saying that musicians are generally bad at communicating, but they don’t realize just how important it is. Some of the best opportunities out there exist on the other side of fear, and that fear is often connected with speaking to, engaging with, or proposing a deal with other people.

The good news is that you aren’t born with people skills. They can be learned. Anybody can become better at conversing with others and building friendships!

It’s not about what you know, so much as it is about who you know, and who you know can make a big difference on the trajectory of your music career.

I will also echo the sentiments mentioned in the original article, that entrepreneurship is the meeting place of many important life lessons, including personal growth habits, people skills, marketing, and much more.

Again, I will add the stipulation here that one person can’t necessarily be all of these things at the same time. An entrepreneur is a problem-solver. As such, if they can’t figure out how to do something on their own, they’ll find someone else who can help them. They might even go looking for a tool or a resource that has gone unnoticed and begin to take advantage of it.

Possibilities

The possibilities are such that a musicpreneur could find new ways of doing business. They could strike up new deals or create a platform or an app that supports their bigger vision.

A musician is already a creative person. That same creativity holds immense potential in the realm of marketing, people and business as well.

Hacking

Another way we can view this movement is what is now commonly referred to as hacking.

Hacking used to mean to “break into”, as in online passwords and secure information, hijacking another computer, cracking a code and accessing confidential and/or sensitive information.

While it still holds that same meaning today, there’s another popular connotation associated with hacking in the modern day – to optimize, to be more productive, to take a different route, to shortcut, to solve a problem in a novel way, and so on. I like the term “Smartcuts”, to differentiate mere shortcuts from smart ways to fast-track your progress. Shane Snow has a book of the same name (affiliate link), and there are some great thoughts within.

But to get back to the subject at hand, life hacking, for instance, might refer to any trick or skill that results in increased productivity and efficiency in one’s life.

Because a musicpreneur is a problem-solver, they can hack their way towards results that might be taking others much longer to create, whether it’s album sales or concert attendance.

This requires imagination. There’s a need to see things from a new perspective, to receive input from other experienced individuals, to see opportunities where others might be missing them, and ultimately to risk failure through trial and error.

Again, if growth is the goal of entrepreneurship, then failure truly doesn’t exist – there are only learning experiences.

Modeling

There aren’t necessarily any charted or pre-established courses for entrepreneurship, let alone success in music. However, a person that is well-read, is open and willing to seek and receive mentorship, and is constantly learning and trying new things is more likely to arrive at meaningful solutions than those who are repeatedly doing the same things expecting different results.

At times, modeling can also be extremely useful. In other words, if you follow what another successful individual is doing, you can hack your way to success faster, because they have already blazed the trail that you’re headed down. If you can learn from their mistakes without having to repeat them, you will shortcut your way to achieving the same results.

This doesn’t necessarily work in every instance, but it is an idea with considerable merit. It has often been said that everyone has a unique path to personal success, and I believe that to be the case, but what works for others does have the opportunity to work for you too, and you can’t completely discount that approach.

In business specifically, you shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. You can inject your work with your personality and quirks, but you don’t need to come up with completely unique marketing, branding, product, or service ideas to succeed.

You Become Like Those You Hang Around

This also goes along with the idea that birds of a feather flock together. In other words, you become like those you hang around. If the people you are hanging around are no more successful than you are, then you probably aren’t being challenged enough. You need to surround yourself with people that bring out the best in you.

We have a wonderful device built in to our human bodies known as mirror neurons, which essentially cause us to mimic the attitude, the posture, and the general impression of those we hang around with most often.

If you’ve ever caught yourself sounding like or acting like a family member or a friend of yours, it is quite likely a byproduct of those mirror neurons.

What would the effect be if you hung around with the people you want to become like. Would you start acting like them? Would you start sounding more like them? Would your boldness and courage rise to their level? That’s the theory, at least.

Have you ever noticed how couples that have been together for a while begin to look alike? This is because our DNA rubs off on others, and their DNA rubs off on us. It should not come as a surprise that you become more like those you hang around often.

Mentorship & Masterminds

This also speaks to the importance of mentorship. If there’s someone in your life that can show you what you need to do, teach you how to think and guide you along your path to success, you’ll be better equipped to make your vision a reality.

Mastermind groups also present the same opportunity, as they give you the chance to tap into the minds of other people who are on the same path or are already ahead of you in some area.

How to set up a mastermind group or the exact specifics of how to conduct a gathering will not be covered here, but suffice it to say that many entrepreneurs have found masterminds to be invaluable to their growth as a person and their businesses.

Business: Far Removed From Creativity?

I think some artists have a tendency of thinking that business is removed from music and creativity altogether.

However, if you look at just about any of the successful artists out there, you will probably find that they either had some business sense, or had someone helping them with the business side of their career.

Some of the methods discussed in this guide will certainly feel different than what you’re probably used to as an artist. By default, musicians often talk about songwriting, gear, artistic expression, their feelings, and so on.

By contrast, business may feel a little cold. It might even seem intimidating or impersonal.

I’m certainly not going to suggest that there isn’t a gap between the two worlds, but the good news is that you can do business a lot better if you can apply your creativity to it.

Shiny Object Syndrome

Entrepreneurs tend to come up with a lot of exciting ideas. This can sometimes result in shiny object syndrome, where a business owner will see a new opportunity, get off track and lose focus on their original idea. There is a time to persevere, and there is a time to quit and move on, but a business does not have a chance at success unless it is given a fair chance. Realistically, you can’t go after every opportunity you see, and focusing on more than one or two businesses at a time is unwise.

This is where mentorship and/or mastermind groups can be of immense value, as I pointed out earlier. If you have people to hold you accountable on a weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly basis, you’re less likely to veer off track.

What To Do With Your Ideas

We can’t underestimate the value of ideas, however, and as such, you need to be able to channel them into your business or set them aside to review later. When you have ideas for new businesses, you may want to store them away (Evernote tends to work pretty well for this purpose), but if you have an idea that you can apply to your existing business, that’s where most of your creativity should be directed.

Evernote is my “digital dumping ground” of choice.

Problem Solving

Another aspect of business that often requires creativity is problem solving. When you think of problem solving, the first thing that comes to mind might be money, but it can also be applied to any area of business (or life!) that presents a challenge, including time, relationships, automation, and so on.

There’s one thing that you can count on in business and in life, and that’s that you will encounter challenges. An entrepreneur should strive to cultivate the ability to see solutions beyond the obvious, and be able to weigh the options.

Marketing & Creativity

Doesn’t marketing require creativity too? I would certainly argue that it does.

Some of the most brilliant ads and marketing campaigns out there were the direct result of creative thinking. You have to be able to connect disparate dots, see the possibilities, and have a strong message that resonates with your audience if you want your marketing to connect with people. It isn’t just about seeing the bigger picture – it’s also about paying attention to your environment. You need to have good timing too.

So, is business far removed from creativity? Do you still think that the two roads never intersect?

Hopefully what you’re beginning to see is that creativity serves a purpose in business as much as it does in music.

The Necessity Of Musicpreneurship

Here in the digital age, music is a far different game than it used to be.

Prior to digital downloads, peer-to-peer sharing, Napster, iTunes, and other online developments, music was primarily sold on physical products, such as vinyl records, audio cassettes, and compact discs.

Major record labels essentially had a monopoly on profitable artists and their music, and though they were more likely to take chances on artists in those days – at least compared to today – it was extremely difficult to become recognized as an independent artist without major label representation.

The internet has been a game-changer. Just about anyone can showcase their craft online. They can leverage the platform to build an audience they never could have otherwise.

However, there are a lot of people out there vying for the same attention. Just like you, they are also looking to build an audience for their art. This makes it harder and harder to get noticed.

You Are A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

It has often been said that you need to cut through the noise, but perhaps the question isn’t so much how to stand out as much as it is how to think.

We project our own assumptions onto the world. If we think we’re going to be rejected, we may not even try. If we think there’s no way to succeed as an artist, it has a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we believe that artists can’t make money, maybe we’ll never apply ourselves towards achieving our financial goals.

This issue of musicpreneurship is really no different. If you see it as a possibility, it is. If you think that it’s just a pie-in-the-sky ideal, you’ll probably negate it.

There Are No Excuses

When it comes to business and achieving success, there is no justification. I know a successful business owner who once said that success doesn’t care about the circumstances. If you commit to consistency, you have to be consistent. If you said you would do something, you have to follow through. If you planned a meeting, you have to show up.

People tend to make decisions emotionally, and this is why it’s so hard to follow through. I don’t think it’s good to be legalistic, but it’s definitely not good to leave a bitter taste in the mouths of your customers, partners, fans, and so on.

At first, no one will be watching. However, as you become more popular, everyone will be watching. This is the same thing we see with the paparazzi and tabloids all the time. If no one knows you, go ahead and pick your nose; if you do it as a celebrity in public, watch out!

Who’s Going To Take Care Of You?

Here’s something else to consider. In today’s world, job security is mostly an outdated notion from an age past. Most people will have 10 different careers by the time they are age 40, and this number is only expected to grow (Experience.com).

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have much faith in government-funded retirement and pension programs either. Moreover, have you actually taken the time to look at what people are getting from these programs? Do you know what kind of cheques your parents or grandparents are receiving?

Personally, I don’t want to leave my future to chance. So what are the options?

In my mind, it basically comes down to three things, though they sometimes have a way of intersecting: 1) business, 2) investments, and 3) creativity.

I am merely echoing the sentiments of people like Seth Godin and James Altucher who are far smarter than I am – and I believe them.

What you want to do with your life is up to you, but I think that entrepreneurship isn’t just a path for the privileged, talented, intelligent, or fortunate few – it could very well become a way of life for anyone looking to achieve results that are out of the ordinary.

Starting Businesses

An entrepreneur is somebody that starts their own business, so by extension, a musicpreneur would also be someone that is looking to start and build businesses.

I think this can play out in a variety of ways, as evidenced by the earlier definition of what a musicpreneur is and what it entails.

Perhaps the simplest example is someone from the first category from earlier – someone who sees an opportunity within the music industry to create a new business.

In recent memory, TIDAL launched a high fidelity music streaming platform. The press conference was met with considerable confusion and criticism, and high fidelity music isn’t necessarily a new concept, but it is a good example of a company that saw an opportunity and decided to build a business around it.

TIDAL was off to a bit of a rocky start, but the concept is intriguing.

In the future, I believe we are going to see an influx of upstarts in the music industry, and because of the popularity of music streaming, many will likely fall under that category.

Fundamentally, when your goal is to have money and people work for you (instead of the other way around), you’ll always be looking for opportunities to build businesses. It would be wise to write down all of your ideas, even if you never end up tapping all of them. I talked about how to manage your ideas earlier.

Starting Your First Business

Starting a business for the first time can be challenging – as you might imagine – but the more you do it, the better and more efficient you will become at it. As I said earlier, your first business might not be a homerun, but you can always leverage the lessons you’ve learned, the connections you’ve built, and some of the company assets, if they translate well into your next enterprise. You can take what you’ve learned, and do something even better with it the next time around.

Moreover, there are plenty of business models out there that don’t necessarily require a high upfront capital investment. Freelancing, network marketing, design, consulting, virtual assisting, tutoring, and many others all fall into this category. If you are new to entrepreneurship, these might be good starting points. It’s nice to know that you can make a little bit of extra money in your spare time.

These opportunities would be less applicable to anyone in the first category, and perhaps more pertinent to anyone who is a musician that also has a business or wants to start a business on the side.

Becoming The Boss & Diversification

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t be a musician and also have a business within the music industry. This is always a possibility. Because you are the boss, there is considerable flexibility in the ventures you pursue.

You are likely already aware of artists like Jay-Z, Britney Spears, KISS or Justin Timberlake that have clothing lines, fragrances, or a slew of other branded merchandise items. These types of ventures may not be feasible for you in the immediate future, but it’s good to know that there are artists out there who are business-minded enough to diversify.

Building a personal empire can oftentimes mean diversification. A smart artist knows that they can’t necessarily depend on their music alone to achieve their financial or career goals. They may have to find other ways of augmenting their earnings.

But be forewarned. Anything that requires constant monitoring is generally considered something that’s closer to a job than a business. If you have to put more of your time, effort and money into a venture on an ongoing basis, you’re not building an asset so much as a job for yourself.

An asset is something that has ongoing increasing returns built into it. That might sound a bit idealistic, but in essence, it’s not an asset if it isn’t making you money, and it’s not an asset if it requires your constant involvement.

Freedom

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be your own boss or calling the shots, but oftentimes entrepreneurs are building businesses with the goal of freedom in mind, and they know that freedom is not going to come from a business that sucks up all their time and energy.

Still, it is not unusual for a business to reach that point before the business owner can look at delegation, automation, elimination, systematization and other methods to free up their time and give them the opportunity to continue to earn from the asset they’ve created while pursuing other ventures.

In summary, those are some of the broader considerations when you are looking at starting your own business. As your business grows, you’ll also want to invest in additional resources, staff, tools, and so on. This is why fast growth isn’t always a good thing. Slow and steady growth is preferable, and has a way of being more profitable too. But that is somewhat idealistic.

Investing In Businesses

Another common approach to business is to invest, or even buy and sell companies.

I personally invested in a business in 2011. Unfortunately, it didn’t get off the ground, and went belly up at the end of 2015.

My involvement with the company was minimal, and I did not have a part in the coding or development of the platform, which is a blessing. I’m pretty sure I would have been dead-weight when it comes to that stuff!

When you invest in businesses, you don’t necessarily have to be a part of the day to day. It really depends on how it’s set up and what role you want to play in the enterprise, but fundamentally it’s something that can grow without you if you have the right pieces in place.

This is where the line between entrepreneur and investor tends to get a little blurry, but when you have successful businesses, you can begin to invest more too. There tends to be a symbiotic relationship between the two.

Warren Buffett confirms as much – he says that if you’re good at business, you’ll become a better investor. If you’re a skilled investor, you’ll also come to understand what makes for a successful business.

Investing Is Not Easy

Investing without specialized knowledge and a high amount of capital is generally unwise. Everybody can learn to be a better investor than they are, but they have to be committed to their personal growth.

When I invested in the previously mentioned company, I took a risk. I believed in the business model and thought that it was something that could benefit artists everywhere.

I’ll be honest – it was like divine intervention. There was a series of events that came together in such a way that I never would have been able to orchestrate on my own. If I didn’t meet a specific person at a certain party at a particular time, there never would have been an opportunity to invest. Though the company failed, it doesn’t mean that some good things didn’t come out of that experience.

Moreover, if I hadn’t awakened to the possibilities of such a business model, I would not have been excited about it, nor would I have had any inclination to invest in it. Quite frankly, I was getting ready to start my own company in the same niche! It was providence that I ran into a few guys who were already preparing to launch a business in the same vein.

An entrepreneur isn’t necessarily defined by investing, but if they see an opportunity, you can almost count on the fact that they’re going to go after it.

Closing Thoughts

To a large extent, musicpreneurship is still unexplored territory.

Though the definitions continue to evolve, what it means to be a musician or an entrepreneur is pretty concrete. When you combine the two, you basically have a new category altogether.

There are plenty of musicians that are putting these principles into practice, however.

It’s a tough world. It’s not enough for musicians to be making music – they have to promote it too. That reality solidified many years ago when Napster came along and changed the music industry for good.

The bigger challenge today is that there is a ton of noise and competition out there. If you’re serious about making a profit from your music in times to come, then an entrepreneurial approach is going to become all the more crucial.

Whether it’s building businesses or brands, investing, creating different types of products or offering add-on services, diversifying is fast becoming a necessity for musicians in this age and in the one to come.

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